By Christian Kraemer and Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk
WARSAW, Feb 2 (Reuters) - Germany and Poland must take joint responsibility for an economic revival in Europe, the finance ministers of both countries said in Warsaw on Monday.
“We need to make Europe more competitive,” Polish Finance Minister Andrzej Domanski said during a joint press conference with German Vice Chancellor and Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil.
“The transatlantic relationship as we know it is undergoing marked change, and we agree: precisely in this phase we must strengthen Europe and move Europe forward,” Klingbeil said, in his first visit to Poland since he took office.
Klingbeil said the EU must become “faster, smarter, and more capable of dealing with complexity.”
Ministers from six leading European economies including Germany and Poland vowed on Wednesday to be the drivers of European progress, as they tackled how to advance projects stalled by the EU’s complex decision-making process.
“We have set ourselves the goal of deepening European cooperation, picking up speed, and also demanding this from the Commission,” Klingbeil said about last week’s video conference.
His Polish counterpart said Europe is in a race.
“A race for competitiveness, for building true economic strength, and to achieve this, we need to accelerate,” Domanski said.
(Reporting by Anna Wlodarczak-Semczuk and Christian Kraemer, writing by Pawel Florkiewicz and Maria Martinez; editing by Linda Pasquini)
